Live at KSC: NASA Scraps Florida Landing

NASA scrapped plans to land at Kennedy Space Center today and is mulling the forecast fotr Monday before deciding whether to send shuttle Endeavour and its crew toward a landing late this afternoon at Edwards Air Force Base.

With high crosswinds picking up and low clouds and thunderstorms moving toward KSC, NASA mission managers decided to forego the second of two landing opportunities at KSC today. Touchdown would have been at 2:54 p.m.

"Endeavour, it doesn't look like a good day for Florida today. The weather again is observed 'no-go' and forecast 'no-go' for the second opportunity. So we've elected to wave off KSC altogether today," NASA astronaut Alan Poindexter said from the Mission Control Center in Houston.

Poindexter told the astronauts to press ahead with deobit preparations up until the point where they would don partial pressure launch-and-entry suits.

"We'll make a decision at that point whether to press ahead for Edwards on the opportunity there," he said. "Our goal is to keep you out of your suits unnecessarily as long as we can."

"If Edwards is in the cards, it's in the cards," Endeavour commander Chris Ferguson said. "And we're all ready wherever you send us."

Click to enlarge and save this NASA TV screen grab, which shows a radar view of a cold front approaching the east coast of Florida:

It shows the general problem NASA was facing in trying to land at KSC today. The approaching cold front pushed crosswinds at KSC up to 19 knots, and the forecast called for gusts up to 28 knots -- well above safe limits for a shuttle landing.

Low cloud decks swept into the KSC area and there was a chance that thunderstorms would encroach on a 30-nautical-mile safety perimeter around the space center by the time of a 2:54 p.m. landing.

NASA for now is leaving open the option of sending Endeavour and its seven astronauts toward a 4:25 p.m. EST landing at Edwards. The deorbit burn in that case would come at 3:19 p.m. EST.

Entry Flight Director Bryan Lunney will be looking at the forecast for weather at KSC on Monday before making a decision on whether to proceed with a landing in California today.

The outlook isn't real good. The forecast from the Spaceflight Meteorology Group at NASA's Johnson Space Center calls for sustained winds of 14 knots with gusts up to 21 knots, and there is a slight chance of broken clouds at 5,000 feet.

NASA prefers to land shuttles at KSC because it costs $1.8 million to fly a shuttle orbiter back to Florida from California atop a modified 747 jet. It also takes at least a week to get the shuttle prepared for what typically is a planned two-day trip back to KSC. That is time an orbiter otherwise could be processed for its next flight.

You can check out this cool interactive graphic of a shuttle landing here: Shuttle Landing

And here's another showing how the shuttle would be brought back to KSC if it were to land in California: Shuttle Piggyback.

Both are by Florida Today graphic artist Dennis Lowe.